Intimacy and Intensity: The Faces of John Cassavetes

The actor/director expressed the power of expressions.

John Cassavetes was a student of particular human behavior. He didn’t care for sweeping gestures about the world at large, but finding those same gestures in the faces of his friends. He shot his films independently, bringing cinéma vérité (or something like it) to a future filled with those, from the mumblecore devotees to the Judd Apatow comic lingerers, that would continue his improvisational tradition.

This influence comes from a striking visual singularity that, as essayist Colin Earner has shown in his video, often relies on the capturing of realistic and recognizable facial movements in extreme close-ups. These are actors in scripted movies, but they retain the familiarity of a home video. This supercut shows some of the technique behind how.